Classical music
David Nice
"You have to start somewhere," remarked Debussy drily at the 1910 premiere of young Stravinsky's Firebird ballet. Even so, that was far more of a somewhere than the ultra-nationalistic Hungarian tone poem Kossuth, first major orchestral flourish of Béla Bartók, the Russian's senior by one year. In choosing it to launch Infernal Dance, the Philharmonia's 2011 celebration not of Stravinsky (as the title weirdly implies) but Bartók, principal conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen showed how far his main Magyar travelled to works like the hyper-percussive First Piano Concerto and the ballet-pantomime The Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
No self-mutilation or incest, but plenty of daddy issues at the Wigmore Hall last night in a musical glance through the Bach family album. Carefully keeping Johann Sebastian out of the way (presumably lest he show everyone else up and spoil the fun), Richard Egarr guided us through the work of his four composer sons. Spread across Europe from London to Hamburg and Bologna, the differing influences, fashions and character of each becomes quickly evident. Just a shame that – even in his absence – all remain so comprehensively dwarfed by their father.It was with Johann Christian, the “London” Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
The great thing about the paucity of Mahler compositions is that, when anniversary time comes, his late-Romantic buddies get to join in. And some of them, like Alexander Zemlinsky in his ravishing Lyric Symphony - being given a rare outing by the London Philharmonic Orchestra last night - sometimes seem to be better at Mahler than Mahler.The Lyric Symphony is cast in the mould of Das lied von der Erde, a symphony with voices, with an Oriental text. There is also a similarity in the musical arc of the two works, both of which begin boldly and end in blissful resignation. Differences, however, Read more ...
Ismene Brown
UPDATE 2015: Four years ago, in January 2011, I wrote this article about the music critic and biographer Michael Kennedy's search for the missing portion of Elgar's life. It identified a Mrs Dora Nelson as the composer's mistress and mother of a lovechild, who might have influenced some legendarily enigmatic aspects of Elgar's compositional output. A new development opened when an Arts Desk reader contacted me, who had taken up Kennedy's and my requests for others to pick up this unsolved mystery. Andrew Baker's work has since identified - unlikely as it may seem - a second Mrs Nelson, who is Read more ...
David Nice
Most of us don't object to experiments in concert presentation - the occasional one-off showcase to lure the young and suspicious into the arcane world of attentive concert-going, the odd multimedia event as icing on the cake. It's only those pundits obsessed with the key word "accessibility" who tell us that the basic concept of sitting (or standing, as they have at the Proms for well over a century) and listening with respect for those around us needs overhauling. It's a typical journalistic conception of "either/or" instead of "all approaches welcome" - a case of what an American academic Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
A programme of French music under the baton of the LPO’s talented young principal guest conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin should be a treat. Nézet-Séguin’s affinity for French textures and gestures has already been amply proved, as has the orchestra’s own aptitude for them, yet whatever was happening to the Fauré Requiem last night at the Royal Festival Hall was neither polished nor delightful. To attribute it simply to a bad day might be the kindest thing, but when you take into account the sold-out hall, the Saturday-night profile of the concert and all the people who had come to London’s Read more ...
mark.kidel
An “Army of Generals” suggests a kind of supergroup, a fighting force made up of leaders rather than followers. If Charles Hazlewood’s band, which has just started a residency at Bristol’s St George's, is such a host, then he presumably is the Generalissimo, primus inter pares, whose mastery is exercised with a showman's display of almost innocent ego.Hazlewood, whose proclamation of intent last week stirred considerable reaction among theartsdesk's users, has chosen as his theme for the residency a dialogue between classical music and contemporary work, dubbing it Abstractions and Read more ...
graham.rickson
This month’s carefully sifted new releases include some quirky Americana and a piano filled with ping-pong balls. A Baroque specialist plays some ripe orchestral transcriptions and a neglected cello concerto gets a new ending. Six Danish symphonies blow the cobwebs away, and we’ve two discs of music by a 20th-century German master. There are songs from Vienna, and a cappella choral music from Russia. A contemporary English composer celebrates the town of his birth. The most soothing of requiem settings contrasts with an hour of Soviet ballet music, prompting memories of circuses and Sunday- Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
We’ve all seen singers go wrong. Forgetting words, missing entries, skipping verses – it happens often enough, and is generally cause for little more than some awkward laughter and a second attempt. Never, however, have I seen a wrong entry (as ill-luck would decree, in the only sacred work of the programme) greeted with a resonant expostulation of “Oh, shit” from the performer, followed by minor audience uproar and many apologies. It wasn’t the finest moment of the evening for Juan Diego Flórez, but – loath though I am to admit it – it wasn’t the worst either.The familiar Flórez recital tics Read more ...
David Nice
No one's saying that the mezzo of the moment, glamorous Latvian Elina Garanca, isn't a very class act indeed when it comes to high-quality opera, song and even zarzuela. But she didn't revert to the Age of Aquarius too successfully in this ill-advised TV show appearance, clearly not having visited Hair when it was on in London. The only protest here might have been from the hapless spectators. And the look makes Kiri as Michael Jackson on her Blue Skies album cover seem dignified.
Below, Elina Garanca sings "Aquarius" from Hair
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So let's be fair, and see and Read more ...
David Nice
Now I know why the BBC Symphony Orchestra slunk so easily into Piazzolla tango mode last Friday: they'd danced it under Latin American instruction four years ago. It's all part of their education department's annual Diverse Orchestras week, where performers from another culture come to open the players' fantasy and the onlookers get to learn something into the bargain. And learning has never been more fun than it was last night in the Tabernacle, Notting Hill's vibrant arts centre, where the Fez Andalusian Orchestra under one of the world's great string players, Mohamed Briouel, set a zinging Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Valery Gergiev’s survey of the Tchaikovsky symphonies began here on a chilly January night with youthfully idealistic Winter Daydreams thrown into the sharpest relief against a disillusioned and angry Shostakovich whose own journey into the bleak mid-winter was, by the time he penned his Second Violin Concerto, very much a one-way ticket. Two revealing performances, one remarkable young violinist.Sergey Khachatryan is wise beyond his years, a slight, wiry, pent-up young man whose small, concentrated sound is so much the product of his inner voice that it feels almost intrusive listening. He Read more ...